Johannes C. Eichstaedt

Johannes C. Eichstaedt, M.S. MAPP M.A. is a Dean's Scholar and PhD candidate in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania under Martin Seligman, credited as the founder of positive psychology. A former physicist, in 2011 he co-founded and led the World Well-Being Project which is pioneering methods to measure the psychological states of large populations using social media, text mining and machine learning. His work has shown that geographic variation in heart disease in the U.S. can be predicted using Twitter. This work has resulted in millions of dollars of grant funding and media attention around the world, including in The New Yorker,Washington Post and The Onion. He was elected a 2014 Emerging Leader in Science & Society by the American Association for Advancement of Science, and is currently working with governments to improve their ability to measure well-being cheaply and unobtrusively through social media.